Downfall

badduck 2018-08-13 11:04

The controls really don't work well, they sometimes don't come through. All the rest was quite solid and likeable!!

woubuc 2018-08-13 11:05

Looks like we both got inspiration for our games from tetris :) I think the concept is nice but right now the game is mostly "waiting around" instead of doing anything, because the blocks take so long to fall.

falk-bruskeland 2018-08-13 11:06

It's a little bit hard to move the block, but it fits with the theme!

alexkarate 2018-08-13 11:13

This is a okay game. I don't think that the blocks are supposed to fall where the space is blacked out? Also the font is pretty hard to read with the bakground dots all over them

wolfrug 2018-08-13 11:18

I wasn't sure what the main gameplay element was - not a match 3, and not a Tetris either (at least it didn't act as tetris to me, i.e. a row of blocks did not disappear). Also by the time you reach only 3 lanes, the input you have as a player on the eventual end of the game is very minimal, as you can't do anything about the 'dark' areas :) Still, a nice little game!

amras0000 2018-08-13 11:20

A lot of Ludum Dare participants make 12 hour games. There's even a 1 hour game jam that takes place during LDs. It's totally doable, but you have to keep your scope tiny. In the case of Downfall, the amount of stuff you wanted to do did not have a chance to be complete in the time you had available.

The game is playable in principle, and has a solid foundation, but it's plagued with weird design decisions and bugs (and I honestly don't know which is which). I will do my best to critique the game in light of its being a 12 hour title, but a lot of this could have been avoided if you didn't try to do so much.

So the first issue came up immediately when I started playing: the A key doesn't work. I can steer with the arrow keys or with Q/D, but even then half the time my input doesn't register. After a while the 'powerups' started kicking in, which either made the game unplayably fast, tediously slow, or randomly changed the game state in ways I could not begin to understand for how frequent the changes were. I felt like my input didn't have much impact on the state of the game, compared to the random stuff that was happening without my control.

I was not able to work out what caused blocks to disappear. At one point I made a 2x2 square and that vanished. At another I made an L shape (4 blocks high, 2 blocks wide) and that disappeared. At another point a random event happened and half my blocks vanished on their own. So I don't really know what I was aiming towards.

There seem to be 2 blue colors and they're virtually impossible to tell apart.

The controllable area "shrunk" every so often but the blocks still fall outside it. So by the endgame, where I only have 3 columns in the middle, the vast majority of blocks I have no control over, and can't speed up. So it's just a waiting game until I get a block I can actually use.

Here's what I'd like from a 12 hour game: Blocks of solid colors (red, green, blue, yellow, orange, pink) fall from the top of the screen. I can move the blocks left and right. I can speed up the blocks by pressing 'down' or 'S'. When I make any set of 4 connected blocks of the same color they disappear and I get 1 point. If any column reaches the top of the screen I lose. Done. Make that, add some sfx and music and polish up the graphics/tutorial/difficulty if you have time left over.

You asked for honest feedback, I hope this fits the bill. You tried to do too much. Keep your scope smaller next time.

psychead 2018-08-13 11:25

I was just about to write something up, but @amras0000 has nailed it. (Thanks for that!)

Noticed your meme game is on point, though. :turkey:

bnmkt 2018-08-13 13:32

@amras0000 That's exaclty what i wanted ! an honest comment about this game, i will not reply to every point.

My game is clearly not perfect, far from it and it is full of bugs like the fact that blocks appear in dark areas and even sometimes outside the area of appearance, this is due to the fact that I have a table that decides where they can not appear and not the other way around... A huge mistake, especially since the way I did it would have saved me a lot of trouble.

Regarding the "A" key, actually my code uses javascript keyCode, code 37 corresponds to Q on an AZERTY keyboard and A on a QWERTY keyboard, having tested it by changing my keyboard configuration this should never have happened, anyway as it happened I will think of another solution (like a choice of keys by the user)

For the fact that the key has not been taken into account is also a big mistake, I will correct it as soon as possible.

One of the events of the game is "Lucky", which is not really the case... which makes that 10% of the blocks disappear, these events appear every 19seconds.

And finally I will increase the number of remaining columns at the end of the game (or change the number of columns removed to 1 every 30 seconds instead of 2)

Thanks for this long comment, I will take into account all remarks, fix bugs and take time for graphics to make this game playable.

( @psychead i don't forget you, thank to you too !)